New
president ready to take PK reins
By
B.J. FAIRCHILD-NEWMAN
Staff writer
When the president
of PK USA, Hiroshige Kakudo, returns to Japan on May 2, the management of
the factory won’t miss a beat. His successor, Eiji Umabayashi, is
already onboard and ready to assume the top position.
PK USA, located on 65 acres at 600 Northridge Drive, started operations in
Shelbyville in 1989 and has experienced five expansions in the years
since. The plant employs 500 people and provides parts for the auto
industry, producing 500 different components and consuming more than
35,000 tons of steel annually.
PK ships about 135,000 pieces, or 25 truckloads, each day. More than 80
percent of PK’s manufactured parts are produced through a contract with
Nissan, but it also sells to Subaru, Toyota and Honda.
Blue River Stamping Inc., located at 1755 McCall Drive, is a subsidiary of
PK USA. The 50,000-square-foot factory, which employs 95 workers, was
built in 1997 on 10 acres, and its business concentrates on small
automotive stamping and assemblies.
It currently produces 530,000 pieces each week and sells most of its
production directly to PK USA.
According to Bill Kent, vice president of human resources and
administrative affairs at the factory for going on 10 years, the current
president, Kakudo, has worked at PK since its startup in Shelbyville.
In 1994, Kakudo returned to Japan where he was general manager of overseas
operations before returning to Shelbyville in 1999 to take the job of
senior vice president of sales and accounting. He was promoted to
president of the company in 2002.
Kakudo is not returning to Japan to retire; he will continue to work for
PK USA’s parent company, Press Kogyo Co. LTD, as the executive officer
in charge of overseas operations.
Press Kogyo has more than $820 million in assets and employs more than
2,000. In fact, the huge, global company has 13 locations worldwide,
including facilities in Portugal, Sweden and Thailand, plus five
facilities in Japan. Outside of the two facilities in Shelbyville, the
only other U.S. factory with ties to Press Kogyo is located in Tennessee.
The incoming president, Umabayashi, is currently senior vice president of
manufacturing and engineering, a job he has held since 2003.
He first worked at the Shelbyville plant from 1991 to 1996 as engineering,
quality and tool-and-die manager, then returned to Japan from 1996-2003 to
work as an engineering manager.
Umabayashi lives in Shelbyville with his wife and a child who attends the
Shelbyville Middle School. He has two children attending college in Japan.
Kent said that PK USA is very proud of the variety of its work force,
employing Americans, Latinos and others, as well as Japanese. Most of the
Japanese workers come to the States on temporary assignments, working
three to five years before returning to their homeland. Most of these
workers are concentrated in the tooling and engineering sections, he said.
Sixty per cent of PK USA’s employees live in Shelby County, and they
average six years of service.
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